Shahnama Contemporary Paintings – The Millennium Exhibition at The Prince’s Foundation London, 2010
curated by Fatima Zahra Hassan
This international contemporary painting exhibition aims at revealing the contemporary relevance and importance of the great epic poem “Shahnama”, the Per¬sian Book of Kings - written by Abul Qasim Firdausi Tusi in 1010 .
The idea of a contemporary Shahnama exhibition originated when the main manuscript exhibition was announced in 2009 by the Cambridge Shahnama project that is conducted by Professor Charles Melville. The exhibition of the world famous Shahnama manuscripts at the Fitzwilliam Museum (which also includes the Queen’s famous Windsor Shahnama) will emphasize the historical importance and the grandeur of the epic and display how it was patronised by various rulers from Persia, India, Afghanistan, Central Asia and Turkey, from the late 13th until the early 20th century.
The contemporary Shahnama painting exhibition is as small in size as it is explicit in its conception, in exploring the effervescent liveliness of its traditions nowadays.
From flying thrones to supernatural creatures and from noblemen to cunning Villon-like characters and exceptionally beautiful women who have a dominating rule in supporting these heroes and from the superhuman character Rustom to Alexander the Great - stories about greed and wordly appetites, tales of goodness and of evil, about the spiritual world that is transcending the material world, are a testimony which displays the Shahnama not just as an elaborate piece of faction, but as one of the grand literary inheritances to mankind, in line, for instance, with the Indian Mahabharata, the Popul Vuh of the Quiché Maya, the Iceland Sagas or the Spanish Cantar de Mio Cid.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue containing es¬says from art historians and art critics in correlation with previously unpublished visual and literary source material.
Fatima Zahra Hassan (Curator)
Artist/Art Educator/Researcher
University of Sharjah
UAE
Manfred Milz (Catalogue Editor)
Art Historian
University of Sharjah
UAE